“2666” by Roberto Bolaño

This book is based around a series of murders that happen in the location of Santa Teresa whilst a strange German man is committing acts of hedonism through his life. The plot is very strange because the two, upon first glance, have little to no connection. The book is divided up into five different sections, starting with “the part about the critics” and ending with “the part about Archimboldi”. Along the way, we meet a series of wonderful and enlightening characters each with their own experience of being human and yet, each of them have had something to say about the way in which they perceive death as both a physical and an idea. The book’s genre eluded me to begin with. At first, I believed it was more of a thriller, maybe mixed with a saga or romance section here and there. But as I read on and on through the parts about Fate, crime etc. I came to the conclusion that the book itself is a piece of social commentary. Though the genre may be a psychological thriller, the book serves as social commentary on the safety of the individual when they are/are not connected to other individuals who do wrong and how you can often get dragged into things that do not directly involve you.

The first part, entitled “The Part about the Critics” is about a bunch of people who are from Europe and they are literary critics obsessed with a German Novelist called Benno von Archimboldi. As they travel around trying to find this man who is now a recluse, they are led all the way to Mexico City but they do not find him at all. Meanwhile, romantic relationships begin to blossom between the critics themselves and their travels draw them closer together. I took this section as a critique of human obsession and the lengths we would go to in order to gain access to information that is not yet known to others - like a prize or elixir. This obsession leads to the feeling of obsession and other obsessions follow. The two obsessions in this part that follow are love and death. It is the critics that rely on the concept of time to get them through these obsessions. The more time that is spent on them, the less enthusiastic they appear:

“Time, which heals all wounds, finally erased the sense of guilt that had been instilled in them by the violent episode in London.” (p.85)

But the one thing that connects the obsessions that are part of the human condition in this section to the obsessions in the other sections is not just time as a concept, but also place as a concept. The Mexican city the European critics run off to is the border town of Santa Teresa in Sonora. They don’t find the author they are looking for, but this place becomes one of the most used concepts in order to critique human safety in the novel. It becomes apparent that there are not many people who can be considered one hundred percent out of harm’s way in this particular place. It is also apparent that whatever loves and obsessions that had been throughout the section seem to take a dip when they reach Santa Teresa. It is like this place is practically repelling the positivity of the human experience. When the murders begin, that becomes a visual concept as something very graphic and very physical begins to take place.

The second part is about a philosophy professor from Barcelona who arrives in Santa Teresa with his daughter - Rosa - who is already a young adult. He’s a single parent as his wife left him shortly after Rosa was born and even though he is intelligent enough to seek safety where it is possible, he is still incredibly frightened that Rosa will become the next victim of these female murders that are beginning in the city. Since this happens, Oscar Amalfitano begins to get nightmares, he has sleeping problems and his obsession with safety clearly leads to an obsession with dreamscapes and night terrors. Even though Oscar Amalfitano goes to work at the University of Santa Teresa, to get his mind off the murders comes to no avail because of the fact he has a young adult daughter. I believe that it is this very sense of place that begins to suck out the positive aspects of Amalfitano’s studies and gets him to concentrate far more on his own philosophy and his own psychology than studying or teaching it.

“That night he waited, dreading the voice. He tried to prepare for a class, but he soon realised it was a pointless task to prepare for something he knew backward and forward. He thought that if he drew on the blank piece of paper in front of him, the basic geometric figures would appear again.” (p.206)

The nightmarish voice that Amalfitano dreads so much here is the same voice he hears on the previous four or five pages. It is the voice of his nightmares that, whilst the murders are being committed, Amalfitano begins to fear more than anything. By the quotation we can clearly see that his reassurance is knowing his subject, but his want is to return to the nightmare in order to gain more information on how to now prevent this. The positivity being sucked out of the situation, he now believes wholly, that this event of Rosa being murdered is inevitable.

The third section is about Oscar Fate who is an American journalist who works for an African-American magazine in New York City. Whilst covering a boxing match and sent to Santa Teresa, a Mexican journalist called Chucho Flores tells Fate about the murders. Flores asks Fate to write about the murders but Fate initially says no. A female journalist in Santa Teresa called Guadalupe promises to get them access to the prime suspect, Klaus Haas - A German who moved to Santa Teresa. Oscar Fate goes to the fight only to meet Rosa Amalfitano and after a horrid situation, Oscar Amalfitano pays Fate to take Rosa back to the USA with him. Before Fate and Rosa leave, they go with Guadalupe to interview Klaus Haas. Oscar Fate is clearly obsessed with his job and the idea of remaining on the correct track. It is only when he physically touches down in Santa Teresa does that morale begin to change. Again, the sense of place takes away the positive and replaces it with a stranger, less moral obsession to the character. It causes a character to act out of their own personality and within a realm of doing what they feel is correct rather than doing what they know is correct. These, in the cases of Santa Teresa, are two entirely different things. Fate has some strange things to say about death which definitely foreshadow an obsession with it later on due to their specifics:

“We didn’t want death in the home, or in our dreams and fantasies, and yet it was a fact that terrible crimes were committed, mutilations, all kinds of rape, even serial killings. Of course, most of the serial killers were never caught.” (p.266)

From this, which is said nearer to the beginning of Oscar Fate’s section than the end - we can see how the specifics of crime and death can impact the way in which he thinks about it later. The severe amount of detail is a clear foreshadowing to his interest in the crimes and the way he behaves afterwards with asking Flores so many specific questions should also make the reader believe that even though he denied Flores, his morale would soon change thanks to obsession with the stories of murder.

The fourth section is entitled “The Part about the Crimes” in which the one hundred and twelve women are covered in Santa Teresa from 1993 to 1997. It covers their backgrounds, members of their family, friends and lifestyles. And, right at the end of their own sections it gives a brutal description of their bloody and often horrifying deaths. After Klaus Haas is questioned, he holds a press conference stating his innocence and blaming the whole thing on a rich family’s son. The boy’s name is Daniel Uribe. The chronicling of the crimes clearly shows the obsession of the killer since the girls are all murdered in particularly gory, graphic ways or they are mutilated extensively. This not only shows that the killer has an obsession with his victims, but it also shows the lack of an emotional connection to his victims. This is an indirect telling to the reader than the killer is probably not someone from the small border town of Santa Teresa where it would have been likely that the killer may have known at least one of the victims personally. Klaus Haas, the German native moved to Santa Teresa, should therefore be the reader’s prime suspect as well since not a lot of sympathy is shown for him through the language use of this section either. But, there also should be a line that strikes the reader as extremely odd and causes them to question the way in which the police are dealing with the case:

“Haas said: the killer is on the outside and I’m on the inside. But someone worse than the killer is coming to this city…” (p.506)

This clearly states that the murders are happening around Santa Teresa even though Klaus Haas, as the main suspect and the only one that is being investigated to this extent, is in prison. This would make it impossible to understand how he is the killer. But the fact that Klaus refers to the killer and the fact that he is ‘getting closer’ to the city means that Klaus may not be the only killer there is. This obviously refers back to the fact that Oscar Fate stated that most serial killers aren’t caught.

The fifth part is about the German author that the literary critics from Part One were so obsessed with and it shows the real story of this recluse is actually very different to the fictitious one that was believed by the European writers. Archimboldi is actually a man called Hans Reiter from Prussia and not Germany. He worked on the Eastern Front as a soldier and then went on to win the Nobel Prize. Hans Reiter learned his artistic style from his cousins and family friends and after the war, he has an affair with one of the family friends’ daughters - Baroness von Zumpe. This Baroness is actually Mrs. Bubis from the first section. Archimboldi also spends a great amount of time with his sister, Lotte. Lotte goes off to have a son and the son’s name is Klaus Haas. Klaus Haas is the prime suspect in the murder case and therefore, we realise that place as a concept brought these people who were all connected in some way closer to each other than they have ever been before. The only reason negativity shrunk in was not only to keep them out of danger but to keep them away from discovering the truth. Thus, I believe that the whole book was actually about keeping the fictional version of Archimboldi alive for the European critics who, if they found of the truth about the nephew, would probably have a lot less respect and a lot less belief in the author than they do at the end of Part One.